2.10 Christmas Party

Order

2.06

Status

::REVISE::

Location

Status: Paine Memorial High School Teachers' Lounge, actually Highlands Rec Center, 1851 Lexington Ave. San Mateo

GC PoC: Erik & Melissa

Parking: Lot in front of Rec Center

Notes: Reserved

Type

Mandatory Puzzle

Plot Setup

Prof. Chronus has lost her bolt cutters and so can't get into Wesley's locker. She needs the locker combo. At a certain location a tachyonic vortex allows players to overhear snippets of conversation from the teacher's lounge.

Props

• DVD player
• 4 Speakers
• Coffee maker
• Plastic inbox trays, qty. 5
• Plant
• Audio system
• Audio data
• Door sign
• Hint sheet for Faculty Christmas Party puzzle

Short Description

Prof. Chronos needs Wesley's locker combo; ghostly voices from 1986 heard at the high school in 2011 help teams find where it might be recorded.

Open Time Period

Sunday, 4 - 7 AM

Staff Instructions

Your Role: Peach Frontier Lab Assistant.

Site Setup:

• Set up audio system and set on repeating loop play
• Call GC

Handout Instructions: Say words to the effect of

Thank heavens you're here. The laboratory's sensors detected some tachyonic radiation at this high school of all places. So I was sent to investigate. Now I hear all these strange sounds...but my grad school classes never covered this. Can you figure it out?

Hints: Since neither the lab nor your character know that Prof. Chronos wants the players to find a locker combination, you can't really help them.

Site Close Down: Clean up.

Other Instructions:

• Stay in character.
• Except ... if a team says "time out," break character and help them.

Detailed Description

Prof. Chronos has been sent to the right time & place, but she's lost her bolt cutters and can't get into Wesley's locker to take the envelope. She thinks the teams might be able to find the combination if they go to the school in the present day - but she doesn't know where the locker combinations are kept. At the high school, the players hear strange, disembodied voices in one room - pieces of conversations from a past Christmas party, made audible in the present by the tachyonic vibrations caused by Prof. Chronos' time travel to the school. It turns out that the voices form a classic logic puzzle (where Mr. Green sits next to a woman but not someone wearing red, etc.), and matching all elements in the puzzle yields a coincidentally useful phrase indicating where the combos are.

How To Give To Teams

Lab sends email to the teams,

Dear colleagues,

The View-O-Scope is fully working again and can see into the past, not just the laboratory's internal cameras! Enter access code 893416 into the interface and you can watch Prof. Chronos in 1986.

The video itself tells the players to go to the "high school" (including giving them the address).

Puzzle Answer

CHECK PRINCIPALS SUITE (with a hint to look in picture frame)

Puzzle Solution

The first step is to notice that there are four conversations with the same five teachers, and that there is some sort of standard logic puzzle about these five teachers. Let's label these voices by their personality:

• MOUSE: male, mousy, insecure, eager to please
• SMUG: male, smug, sarcastic, a southern drawl
• CHIPPER: female, chipper, manic, City Girl Squawk
• DEADPAN: female, deadpan, bored
• ACCENT: male, stuffy, paternal

Also, for convenience, let's number the conversations:

1. This conversation has SMUG mentioning the room arrangement: numbered 1-9 along the hallway, with odd numbers on one side and even numbers on the other.
2. This conversation has a champagne cork and a chorus "I do not own a watch!"
3. This conversation has CHIPPER say that the male names are male and the female names are female.
4. This conversation has ACCENT go into detail about the final message extraction.

By listening to the conversation, we can find out that these are the attributes we must match up:

• First names: Alfred, Charlie, Ulysses (all male); Kimberly, Nicole (both female)
• Last names: Campbell, Harrison, Iverson, Landau, Peterson
• Subjects taught: Endocrinology, Isomorphisms, Robotics, Spectroscopy, Thermodynamics
• Room numbers: 5 distinct numbers in the range 1-9, subject to certain restrictions
• Break periods: 5 distinct numbers from 1 to 5.

The first step is to match some names with the voices:

• ACCENT is Ulysses (SMUG addresses him as such in Conv. #1)
• MOUSE is Alfred (SMUG and DEADPAN both addresses him as such in Conv. #2) Landau (he makes an accident with a champagne cork in Conv. #2, and the incident is referenced in Conv. 4).
• SMUG is Charlie (by elimination, the only male name left) Harrison (he reacts to ACCENT mentioning "Harrison" in Conv. #1)
• CHIPPER is Kimberly (DEADPAN addresses her as such in Conv. #3)
• DEADPAN is Nicole (by elimination, the only female name left) Campbell (CHIPPER addresses her as "Campbell" in Conv. #3)
• We still have the surnames Peterson and Landau left, but we don't know yet which is Ulysses and which is Kimberly.

The next step is to notice from DEADPAN Nicole's first line in Conv. #3 that one of the teachers is in Room 8 and has a 4th-period break. Who is it?

• It's not DEADPAN Nicole Campbell, since she expresses desire for Room 8 in Conv. #3.
• It's not CHIPPER Kimberly, same reason.
• It's not ACCENT Ulysses, since in Conv. #3 he asserts that his room has a number less and 6.
• It's not SMUG Charlie Harrison, since in Conv. #1 ACCENT Ulysses mentions that SMUG Charlie Harrison has two neighbors, and Room 8 would be at the end of one side of the hallway as the numbers only go from 1 to 9.
• Therefore, MOUSE Alfred must teach in Room 8 and have the 4th period break.

Now we should look at which five of the nine rooms are used.

• From Conv. #1, we can infer that three of the rooms are consecutive on one side of the hall, and the other two are consecutive on the other side of the hall.
• Since Room 8 is in use (see above), we can deduce from that and the previous rule that Room 6 is in use and Room 2 is not.
• From DEADPAN Nicole's line about multiples in Conv. #2, we can also deduce that Room 1 can't possibly be in use.
• This leaves the following possibilities: 56789, 35678, 34568, 45678, 46789.
• From DEADPAN Nicole's line about multiples in Conv. #2, we can eliminate 56789 (no multiples) and 34568 (3/6 and 4/8 are both multiples).

Now let's try to figure out the break periods.

• SMUG Charlie Harrison is first:
  • Although we can't figure out which one of 35678, 45678, or 46789 is correct, we can at least see that Charlie has two neighbors, must be in room 5 or room 6.
  • Since according to MOUSE Alfred in Conv. #3, nobody has a break period with a number that is equal to or one away from their room number, we know that Charlie doesn't have break period 5.
  • Charlie also doesn't have break period 4 because Alfred has it.
  • According to DEADPAN Nicole in Conv. #3, Charlie doesn't have periods 2 or 3 as that's when his favorite soap opera is on.
  • So, SMUG Charlie Harrison must have break period 1.
• According to MOUSE Alfred in Conv. #2, Kimberly and Nicole have consecutively-numbered break periods. Since the only unassigned periods remaining are (2,3,5), they must be periods 2 and 3, although we don't know which is which yet.
• This means that ACCENT Ulysses has period 5.

Now we can determine more about the rooms:

• MOUSE Alfred is in Room 8 (previously deduced).
• What room is ACCENT Ulysses in?
  • From his own admission in Conv. #3, he teaches in a room with a number less than 6.
  • From MOUSE Alfred in Conv. #3, nobody has a break period with a number that is equal to or one away from their room number. As ACCENT Ulysses has period 5, this means he does not have any of rooms 4, 5, or 6.
  • From our room number analysis, only one of 35678, 45678, or 46789 is correct.
  • The only possibility consistent with all three above statements is that ACCENT Ulysses is in room 3, and the five rooms are 35678.
• What room is SMUG Charlie Harrison (period 1) in?
  • ACCENT Ulysses says that Harrison shares two walls with neighbors, so the only possible room from 35678 that fits Charlie Harrison is room 5.
  • The remaining rooms are 6 and 7, which go with Kimberly and Nicole, but we don't know which is whose.

We can figure out the remaining surnames now:

• Peterson is in a room number higher than 5 (Charlie's), according to DEADPAN Nicole in Conv. #2.
• We already know that ACCENT Ulysses has room 3.
• So, the surname assignment must be:
  • ACCENT Ulysses Iverson
  • CHIPPER Kimberly Peterson

And now we can figure out the remaining rooms:

• Campbell has a higher room number than Peterson, according to SMUG Charlie in Conv. #3.
• So, Peterson must be in room 6, and Campbell must be in room 7.

A review of our data so far:

• SMUG Charlie Harrison, Room 5, Break Period 1
• CHIPPER Kimberly Peterson, Room 6, Break Period 2 or 3
• DEADPAN Nicole Campbell, Room 7, Break Period 2 or 3
• MOUSY Alfred Landau, Room 8, Break period 4
• ACCENT Ulysses Iverson, Room 3, Break period 5

Now for the teaching subjects:

• Who teaches Spectroscopy?
  • According to Conv. #2, Dr. Iverson has a break right after the Spectroscopy teacher's break.
  • So, this means that MOUSE Alfred Landau is the Spectroscopy teacher.
• When is the Robotics break period?
  • Break period 4 is MOUSE Alfred Landau's, and he teaches Spectroscopy. So it's not break period 4.
  • According to Conv. #3, the administration is thinking about changing its break period to be earlier in the day. So it's not break period 1.
  • According to Conv. #2, Robotics' break period is immediately followed by the Isomorphisms teacher's break. So it's not break periods 3 or 5.
  • Therefore, Robotics must be break period 2.
  • And so Isomorphisms must be break period 3.
  • These are taught by Kimberly and Nicole, but we don't know which is which (yet).
• What does SMUG Charlie Harrison teach?
  • He asserts in Conv. #1 that he doesn't teach Thermodynamics.
  • Therefore, he must teach the remaining subject, Endocrinology.
• And by elimination, ACCENT Ulysses Iverson teaches Thermodynamics.

Finally, we can distinguish the last step by using the watch:

• According to Conv. #3, CHIPPER Kimberly Peterson has a watch (that she doesn't know how to silence).
• According to Conv. #4, the Isomorphisms teacher doesn't have their watch with them.
• Therefore, the Isomorphisms (break period 3) teacher must be Nicole, and the Robotics (break period 2) teacher must be Kimberly.

Now on to message extraction. ACCENT Ulysses spells out the steps pretty specifically in the Conv. 4 -- sort by break period, then read out both initials, the first letter of the subject, and the room number indexed into the subject. This results in:

• Charlie Harrison, Room 5, EndoCrinology
• Kimberly Peterson, Room 6, RobotIcs
• Nicole Campbell, Room 7, IsomorPhisms
• Alfred Landau, Room 8, SpectroScopy
• Ulysses Iverson, Room 3, ThErmodynamics

This reads out to be "CHECK PRINCIPAL'S SUITE". There is also a strong hint from Ulysses that the players should look in the right "frame".

Unnecessary and/or Redundant Information:

• Conv. #2: Landau teaches in a higher-numbered room than Charlie.
• Conv. #2: MOUSE is being addressed as Alfred twice.
• Conv. #2: Kimberly and Nicole teach in consecutively numbered rooms.
• Conv. #2: The Spectroscopy teacher does not own a watch.

Manager

Dave S

Response to Correct Answer

n/a Teams should go off on their own to the principal's office

To Do

• Finalize the script
• Record final audio
• Master loops and burn onto DVD
• Test 4-channel loudspeaker arrangement

Other Notes

Candidate for final script:

• Media:Script_for_Christmas_Party_--_January_26.rtf

Mockup with non-final script and voices:

• Media:Overheard1_Jan19.mp3
• Media:Overheard2_Jan19.mp3
• Media:Overheard3_Jan19.mp3
• Media:Overheard4_Jan19.mp3

See idea genesis at Background Chatter